The two “lost” Graumlich foxtail series used in Esper et al 2002 were archived today at WDCP. Only the specific series that I had requested were archived; other series in Bunn et al 2005 were not archived – see prior discussion here.
UPDATE May 17: Graumlich also archived two chronologies (Boreal -ca636.crn; Upper Wright – ca637.crn). I’ve plotted these chronologies against the chronologies emailed to me by Science in February. There is also a slight difference in the number of cores used in each. For Boreal, Esper shows 64 cores as being used to make his chronology, while Graumlich has only archived 63 cores. For Upper Wright, Graumlich has 77 cores starting after 710 (the start of the Esper series), while Esper says that he used 78 cores. These numbers in Esper appear to be computer-generated rather than misprints, so there seems to be some remaining slight difference between the data as used by Esper and as archived by Graumlich.
Black – Esper; red- Graumlich. Smoothed with 21-year gaussian filter.
Climate Audit 
7 Comments
2 down, 5 to go then. At least it is encouraging that the WDCP is now being used more frequently.
And they’re not exactly copies of each other are they?
The differences in the series are far from insignificant.
a) In both series, the 1800-2000 slope is much larger in the Esper version.
b) In the Boreal Plateau series, the overall trend is upwards in the Esper version, and downwards in the Graumlich version.
c) In the Upper Wright Lake series, the Graumlich version is consistently smaller than the Esper version.
Overall, the match is very poor. I am hard pressed to think of a reason that these two would be that different.
w.
The standardization methods would be different. Graumlich probably did “conservative” standardization i.e. detrending each core individually with a neg-exp curve, while Esper may have done RCS in which he detrended using one curve for all series.
The existence of such differences is evidence (if any were needed) why one needs to see Briffa’ measurement data and simply providing a “chronology” for Tornetrask, Taimyr etc, is insufficient.
Thes series are very important in contributing to the medieval-modern difference in Esper. Can anyone give me a good reason why Esper needs TWO foxtail series when he only has 14 series to cover the entire NH?
Also the average of these two series (Esper version) is used by Osborn and Briffa 2006, where is is one of the 2 strongest contributors to 20th century anomalies. (The other, of course, is Mann’s PC1 dominated by bristlecones about 50 km away.) Again can anyone give me a good reason why Osborn and Briffa need TWO of these series out of 14 to cover the entire NH?
Hey, Steve: did you ever audit a promotion that had as many deficiencies as these HS studies?
Minor observation. In modern times (at least, since my childhood) Boreal Plateau has been a place of very, very high snowfall. Some of the highest I’ve seen anywhere on earth. It is also one of the lesser disected blocks up at the Sierra crest. A very interesting place.
Scratch that last comment, I was thinking Boreal Plateau was Boreal Ridge. I saw my mistake when I looked at the coordinates in the June thread.